Does anybody else see this? What's wrong with the picture

[zbdent]

Aside from the bodies of the contractors being hung up on the bridge:

Jessica Lynch - body crushed in the ambush that killed a bunch of her teammates (and got them captured) - taken to an Iraqi hospital and quite possibly had her life saved. Rumors (yet to be proven true) that she was raped. Injuries tended to as best as they can.

Several other members of the same unit were injured and captured. One (forget her name right now - damn that liberal media for focusing solely on the black woman and ignoring a squeaky-clean young blonde poster child) was shot in the legs. Their injuries were tended to, none reported being tortured. Unless you count the woman's top starting to be torn off until they realized that it was a woman under there.

Recently, a contractor was taken hostage. This man had been shot in the arm prior to capture. After his escape from his captors, it was learned that his wound was tended to (nicely) and he was given antibiotics.

None of the above recounted being tortured by the "barbarious Iraqis" (correct me if I'm wrong).

Now, we turn our attention to the POWs in our care. Oops, "enemy combatants".

According to Donald Rumsfeld today, we have only seen the tip of the iceberg, that there are videos depicting worse.

Is there something wrong with this picture???? Or is it just me?

A lot of the stuff that we have seen in the pictures seems tame compared to what had been mentioned by various people on newsgroups, call-ins to conservative radio shows, and the "Republican" line of C-Span. How many of you have heard stories about what your normally sane friends would have done to any of the people that had anything to do with terrorists? The actions of the soldiers is not so much of a shock, then. Especially when you remember that you have to dehumanize your enemy to be able to grasp killing them. And, if you believe all the right-wing rhetoric, there are no liberals in the armed forces. Only Republican/Conservative heroes.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Ok putting the cynical hat on

What has happened is that soembody in Iraq decided to play the propaganda war and is wining... yes that is the cynical side

Reality is that whether they chose to do it on purpose or not, they have shown far more humanity... we have gone from soldier giving a kid a bar of chocolate and received with wine and flowers (Paris), to despised, and will be seen as torturers for years to come.

[DulceDecorum]

2. The Iraqi are civilians

and they behave with civility.

Remember the POWs from Jessica Lynch's group?
When they were rescued,
the US POWs were yelling to the Marines NOT to hurt the Iraqi "captors"
because the Iraqis had been very good to them
and had bought the POWs food and medicine from their own money.

When the US military convoy was advancing on Baghdad, they ran out of food and water.
Thanks Rummy.
The Iraqi people could not stand to see them suffering so and therefore, they fed them.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0310/S00105.htm

Civilians behave in this manner to wards each other and those that they consider human.
Unfortunately for CIVILIANS,
urban warfare,
as promoted by the Pentagon and the War Colleges,
advocates strongly for the elimination of humanity in general.

It is the CIVILIANS in the US who are outraged and disgusted
by the ill-treatment of their Iraqi counterparts by the military.
It is the military that is defending itself from civilian outrage both in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And it is the military that plans to kill us all.